PROVIDENCE — The City of Providence has agreed to pay $75,000 and admit it violated a woman’s rights to free speech when the police prevented her from handing out fliers outside then-Mayor David Cicilline’s...

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By
Katie Mulvaney
Posted Oct. 21, 2012 @ 12:01 am

PROVIDENCE — The City of Providence has agreed to pay $75,000 and admit it violated a woman’s rights to free speech when the police prevented her from handing out fliers outside then-Mayor David Cicilline’s State of the City speech in 2010.

The city acknowledged in a consent agreement filed Monday in U.S. District Court that it “unconstitutionally interfered” with Judith Reilly’s right to peacefully publish and distribute fliers on a public sidewalk in front of the Providence Career and Technical Academy on Cranston Street on Feb. 2, 2010.

Under the terms, Reilly will receive $500 in compensatory damages with $74,500 to go toward legal costs. The Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union brought the lawsuit on Reilly’s behalf.

Reilly was attempting to distribute leaflets to people attending Cicilline’s annual speech. The leaflets, created by the Olneyville Neighborhood Association, were critical of Cicilline’s reappointment of a city Plan Commission member. Two police officers told Reilly and another person to move across the street or face arrest. Reilly moved and then returned to the front of the auditorium, where two other officers told her to move again, court papers show.

U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith in March found that the Providence police had violated her constitutional rights.

Reilly said in a statement: “My constitutional rights are priceless. … I will never understand why Mayor [Angel] Taveras chose to spend so much public money defending the indefensible. I hope that he and the Police Department learned something from this case, but I fear they have not.”

The city had contended that police, in telling Reilly to cross the street, were concerned about keeping the sidewalk clear in case of an emergency. As part of the agreement, the city conceded that the “police department custom of clearing vast public spaces in order to keep exit passageways open” was unconstitutionally applied in Reilly’s case.

Sinapi took the city and the police to task in a statement Monday.

“Ms. Reilly’s peaceful leafleting represented a time-honored method for sharing political views with other members of the public,” he said. “It is disconcerting that purportedly well-trained police officers in a large municipal police department like Providence could be unaware that banning such activity violated First Amendment rights — particularly since two of the officers involved in the suit have law degrees.”

He faulted city officials for refusing “to amicably resolve” the case for a fraction of the cost.

“This decision,” Sinapi said, “will hopefully ensure that citizens exercising free-speech rights in Providence will not be subjected to unreasonable restrictions in the future.”

The city had not provided a response to the Journal by Monday night.

The Rhode Island Ethics Commission last month authorized an investigation into a complaint by Reilly alleging that House Speaker Gordon D. Fox violated the state’s code of ethics by failing to disclose income he received for performing legal work for the Providence Economic Development Partnership (PEDP) between 2005 and 2009.

(Correction: The headline on this story was changed because it was incorrect in stating that $75,000 would be paid to Reilly.)